Departures Movie Analysis

I can connect with Daigo in the movie Departures, he found out his calling was to be a funeral director and I feel like that was also a career path I would like to follow. I connected emotionally with this movie but I also learned many aspect of other cultures. I did not realize how much different the American way of preparing a body can be from the Japanese way. Some parts of the movie can be connected with different chapter of the textbook Death, Society, and the Human Experience. First, throughout the movie Daigo comes into contact with death animals like the octopus and the salmon. I believe this was a symbol for his unresolved grief of his mother’s death but also his father leaving them. One scene of the movie the woman that run the …show more content…
The funeral themselves are completely different. It looked to be head at the family’s house. There was only a small group of people that would attend, mainly family or people who were close. Also, everyone would remove their shoes and kneel for the ceremony. The preparation of the body was what shocked me the most. The funeral directors would come in with a coffin and their materials. Then would then start the process of clean, dressing and making the body look perfect for the funeral. They should not show any naked skin to the family and with any abrasive things they might have to do in order to make the person look more like themselves. An example of this would be when the other gentleman covered the woman face so he would put cotton balls in her mouth to make her cheeks fuller like they did in her picture. After everything was finished all the body they prepared would be cremated. Finally, it shocked my how disgrace of a job everyone make this to be. Daigo’s friend and wife would both be bothered with the fact he is preparing the dead for funerals. His wife would make statement like he was unclean because of this and that this was a not a real job. Daigo really connected with his job so he did not let anyone push him away from it. Closer to the end of the movie Daigo’s friend and wife saw his work and I believe they gained respect for him. It is a difficult job to do and